A refrigerator is disclosed herein.
Generally, a refrigerator is a home appliance which stores food at a low temperature in a storage space formed therein to be opened and closed by a door. To this end, the refrigerator is formed to cool an inside of the storage space using cooling air generated through heat exchange with a refrigerant circulated in a refrigeration cycle, and thus to keep the stored food in an optimum state.
Recent refrigerators have tended to become bigger and have multi-functions according to a change in diet and a tendency toward high-quality of a product. And the refrigerators which have various devices for convenience to enhance user convenience have been released.
The storage space of the refrigerator may be opened and closed by a door. And typically, the door has a gasket to prevent a leak of cooling air while the door is closed, and a greater adhesion between the gasket and a cabinet tends to decrease the leaking of cool air.
Therefore, to increase the adhesion of the gasket, there is provided a structure in which a magnet is provided inside the gasket, and the gasket becomes in close contact with the cabinet formed of a steel material when the door is closed.
Meanwhile, in the case in which the gasket is in close contact with the cabinet using the magnet, when the door is opened, a force corresponding to a magnetic force is further required due to the magnetic force, and since a user should open the door with a greater force, there is inconvenience in use.
To solve the problem, there are various door opening devices which assists opening of the door, and a refrigerator in which the door opening device is driven by a user's operation to enable the user to open the door with less force has been developed.
In Korean Patent Publication No. 10-2011-0040030, there is disclosed a structure in which a door handle is provided at a refrigerator door, and an operating part is provided at the door handle, and a door opening device provided at a cabinet is operated when a user operates the operating part, and thus the door is pushed and opened.
However, in the refrigerator having such a structure, since a position which is pushed to open the door is distant from a hinge shaft, there is a problem that a length of a rod is very long when the door is opened.
And since the operating part of the door handle should be operated to open the door, there is another problem that it is impossible to operate the operating part when the user is holding an object and may not use both hands.